The fragsuits seem much more reasonable now. It provides mobile cover and is much better at stopping penetrating shots since your flesh isn't immediately behind the penetrated armour.

I don't see how anything here makes them "more reasonable". There's no new information. The suit breaks up into automated fragments that either cover or shoot, we knew this already.

Penetration isn't an issue with hardsuits. The fragsuits MIGHT be a bit better at dealing with plasma, but only if they are REALLY good at getting between the user and the shooter. They'll never be as reliable as actually wearing the suit, but might be able to stop more than one shot if they work at all.

The main benefit still seems to be the drone weapons, but there's no obvious reason those need to be part of the suit on entry. Full hardsuit+drone escort seems to be the natural approach.

Yup. Everything about this was pretty much obvious from the introduction. AI directed semi-autonomous drones. Even if they're TRYING to get between you and incoming fire... there's a lot less area to cover when your armour is actually ON you.

Basically, this seems a lot worse than the Osiri hardsuits. They had the drones, but you got to keep wearing your big-boy pants.

The fragsuits seem much more reasonable now. It provides mobile cover and is much better at stopping penetrating shots since your flesh isn't immediately behind the penetrated armour.

I'm not sure it's more reasonable than bringing along the mobile bits while keeping a hard layer adjacent to your skin.

Space armor, that is, armor with space between the layers, is EXTREMELY better than solid armor, because of materials and physics that I don't really understand, but goes along the lines of any shot that impacts a surface has to expend much of its energy to do so. If you can make it do so AGAIN after it penetrates armor the first time, that means its expended that much energy a SECOND time, on top of having to return to air friction. Also, the fact it had to drill through the armor the first time means its likely deformed and blunted, or even fragmented, which FURTHER reduces its power.

Each inch of air gap between armor equals like two inches of solid plating, if I'm recalling. It's definitely greater than the space taken up by that air gap.

And armor you wear can only protect you from one direction. Your FULL armor may measure foot and a half, but it's still only half an inch at any given point because it's spread over your entire body, rather than interposing itself between you and incoming fire.

You also don't want to be TO armored all at once because it greatly reduces your mobility. Yes, even Schlockiverse armor.

Spaced armor is especially effective against shaped charges, which emit a focused plasma jet . . . thus, it may be especially effective against plasma fire as well, though I haven't been able to obtain definitive information yet.

The fragsuits seem much more reasonable now. It provides mobile cover and is much better at stopping penetrating shots since your flesh isn't immediately behind the penetrated armour.

I'm not sure it's more reasonable than bringing along the mobile bits while keeping a hard layer adjacent to your skin.

Space armor, that is, armor with space between the layers, is EXTREMELY better than solid armor, because of materials and physics that I don't really understand, but goes along the lines of any shot that impacts a surface has to expend much of its energy to do so. If you can make it do so AGAIN after it penetrates armor the first time, that means its expended that much energy a SECOND time, on top of having to return to air friction. Also, the fact it had to drill through the armor the first time means its likely deformed and blunted, or even fragmented, which FURTHER reduces its power.

Each inch of air gap between armor equals like two inches of solid plating, if I'm recalling. It's definitely greater than the space taken up by that air gap.

And armor you wear can only protect you from one direction. Your FULL armor may measure foot and a half, but it's still only half an inch at any given point because it's spread over your entire body, rather than interposing itself between you and incoming fire.

You also don't want to be TO armored all at once because it greatly reduces your mobility. Yes, even Schlockiverse armor.

The first layer of armor disrupts or detonates the incoming shot. Nothing solid is getting through Schlockverse armor intact.

So after the first layer you are either dealing with a shockwave, blast, and bunch of fragments (explosive, solid "penetrator", or Schlockverse plasma-weapon on a high spread) or you are dealing with a somewhat directional plasma jet (shaped charge or Schlockverse plasma-weapon on a needle shot).

Either way, giving it space to spread before it hits the next layer of armor is extremely useful. The gap pretty well stops a shockwave cold (added armor is nearly useless against this), and the first layer will at least induce some spread in a directional plasma jet causing it to loose a lot of intensity prior to the next layer. Blast energy has someplace to spread with the gaps, while solid armor actually acts as containment and thus keeps the energy from dissipating relatively harmlessly.

Yeah, having some of your armor at a distance makes good sense if you can do it. The real question is, "why not do that AND have hard armor as the final layer?"

As others have pointed out, you could have the independent drones PLUS a hardsuit. If it's one or the other, the drones may be much better, but they're rich. Use both.

I'm not sure it's more reasonable than bringing along the mobile bits while keeping a hard layer adjacent to your skin.

Space armor, that is, armor with space between the layers, is EXTREMELY better than solid armor, because of materials and physics that I don't really understand, but goes along the lines of any shot that impacts a surface has to expend much of its energy to do so. If you can make it do so AGAIN after it penetrates armor the first time, that means its expended that much energy a SECOND time, on top of having to return to air friction. Also, the fact it had to drill through the armor the first time means its likely deformed and blunted, or even fragmented, which FURTHER reduces its power.

Each inch of air gap between armor equals like two inches of solid plating, if I'm recalling. It's definitely greater than the space taken up by that air gap.

And armor you wear can only protect you from one direction. Your FULL armor may measure foot and a half, but it's still only half an inch at any given point because it's spread over your entire body, rather than interposing itself between you and incoming fire.

You also don't want to be TO armored all at once because it greatly reduces your mobility. Yes, even Schlockiverse armor.

The first layer of armor disrupts or detonates the incoming shot. Nothing solid is getting through Schlockverse armor intact.

So after the first layer you are either dealing with a shockwave, blast, and bunch of fragments (explosive, solid "penetrator", or Schlockverse plasma-weapon on a high spread) or you are dealing with a somewhat directional plasma jet (shaped charge or Schlockverse plasma-weapon on a needle shot).

Either way, giving it space to spread before it hits the next layer of armor is extremely useful. The gap pretty well stops a shockwave cold (added armor is nearly useless against this), and the first layer will at least induce some spread in a directional plasma jet causing it to loose a lot of intensity prior to the next layer. Blast energy has someplace to spread with the gaps, while solid armor actually acts as containment and thus keeps the energy from dissipating relatively harmlessly.

Yeah, having some of your armor at a distance makes good sense if you can do it. The real question is, "why not do that AND have hard armor as the final layer?"

As others have pointed out, you could have the independent drones PLUS a hardsuit. If it's one or the other, the drones may be much better, but they're rich. Use both.

I'm not sure how capable the low profile armor they habitually wear as uniforms is, but it's probably significant, all by itself.Schlock isn't wearing any, but Kong is, and so is Elf.I think that qualifies as "both".

In RL, they use "armor" on satellites that is basically multiple layers of Mylar, with spaces in between. The particle (it's intended for small impactors) hits the top layer, turns into tinier particles, and so forth.

Kendrakirai wrote:

Nemoricus wrote:

Reaver225 wrote:

The fragsuits seem much more reasonable now. It provides mobile cover and is much better at stopping penetrating shots since your flesh isn't immediately behind the penetrated armour.

I'm not sure it's more reasonable than bringing along the mobile bits while keeping a hard layer adjacent to your skin.

Space armor, that is, armor with space between the layers, is EXTREMELY better than solid armor, because of materials and physics that I don't really understand, but goes along the lines of any shot that impacts a surface has to expend much of its energy to do so. If you can make it do so AGAIN after it penetrates armor the first time, that means its expended that much energy a SECOND time, on top of having to return to air friction. Also, the fact it had to drill through the armor the first time means its likely deformed and blunted, or even fragmented, which FURTHER reduces its power.

Each inch of air gap between armor equals like two inches of solid plating, if I'm recalling. It's definitely greater than the space taken up by that air gap.

And armor you wear can only protect you from one direction. Your FULL armor may measure foot and a half, but it's still only half an inch at any given point because it's spread over your entire body, rather than interposing itself between you and incoming fire.

You also don't want to be TO armored all at once because it greatly reduces your mobility. Yes, even Schlockiverse armor.

There's nothing wrong with having blast shields that try and get between you and incoming fire - as mentioned, that's great.

But the low-profile armour can be defeated by simple armour-piercing pistol rounds. That's from in-comic sources. One would assume that the hardsuits were pretty much proof against projectile weaponry. Shedding the vast majority of your armour to somewhat improve your defense against anti-armour weapons seems... counterproductive at best. And this of course assumes that your floating armour can even cover you in time.

We come back to the point "Why don't you just deploy the drones in addition to the hardsuit?" It's all the advantages, none of the disadvantages. I recall last time we had this argument somebody kept talking about hacking, but the fragsuit already consists of drones! It's EXACTLY the same hacking risk.

As for mobility, Elf was able to walk around carrying a couple tonnes of gold bar in a hardsuit. Schlockverse tech seems to make moving EASIER in armour, not harder.

Slightly more on topic: I say they try and build a Schlock-to-schlock link. Let bits of him stay stuck to all the armour. If anybody could handle the parallel processing involved in piloting all his distributed armour-bits, it's schlock.

I'm not sure how capable the low profile armor they habitually wear as uniforms is, but it's probably significant, all by itself.Schlock isn't wearing any, but Kong is, and so is Elf.I think that qualifies as "both".

Slightly more on topic: I say they try and build a Schlock-to-schlock link. Let bits of him stay stuck to all the armour. If anybody could handle the parallel processing involved in piloting all his distributed armour-bits, it's schlock.

I"m not sure if that would work or not. Schlock's physiology seems to be very much built around "collect the bits together". I"m not sure he -can- separate parts of himself and have them still be functional, separate units.

And from a design standpoint for people who are worried about the "green goo scenario", having a very hard-coded limit on semi-sentient motile memory multiplying itself seems prudent.

Slightly more on topic: I say they try and build a Schlock-to-schlock link. Let bits of him stay stuck to all the armour. If anybody could handle the parallel processing involved in piloting all his distributed armour-bits, it's schlock.

I"m not sure if that would work or not. Schlock's physiology seems to be very much built around "collect the bits together". I"m not sure he -can- separate parts of himself and have them still be functional, separate units.

And from a design standpoint for people who are worried about the "green goo scenario", having a very hard-coded limit on semi-sentient motile memory multiplying itself seems prudent.

Well he can separate himself into multiple separate units. That's how amorphs reproduce. The problem is getting that fine line between separated enough to operate multiple pieces of armor, and separated enough to be different amorphs.

There's nothing wrong with having blast shields that try and get between you and incoming fire - as mentioned, that's great.

But the low-profile armour can be defeated by simple armour-piercing pistol rounds. That's from in-comic sources. One would assume that the hardsuits were pretty much proof against projectile weaponry. Shedding the vast majority of your armour to somewhat improve your defense against anti-armour weapons seems... counterproductive at best. And this of course assumes that your floating armour can even cover you in time.

We come back to the point "Why don't you just deploy the drones in addition to the hardsuit?" It's all the advantages, none of the disadvantages. I recall last time we had this argument somebody kept talking about hacking, but the fragsuit already consists of drones! It's EXACTLY the same hacking risk.

As for mobility, Elf was able to walk around carrying a couple tonnes of gold bar in a hardsuit. Schlockverse tech seems to make moving EASIER in armour, not harder.

Slightly more on topic: I say they try and build a Schlock-to-schlock link. Let bits of him stay stuck to all the armour. If anybody could handle the parallel processing involved in piloting all his distributed armour-bits, it's schlock.

Mobility isnt just a factor of carry capacity and speed, it's also of SIZE. Chisulo and that other one I forget the name of, they're often left behind because nobody remembers they CAN'T FIT THROUGH DOORS while armored. Captain Landon had to strip to fit into the Teraport cage. A human-sized being, if armored to the point you seem to want them to be, would be double their original size. Making them a bigger target, less mobile because the doors and corridors aren't big enough for proper troop movements, and the thing you seem to forget about Elf lugging that gold around is that she was draining her suit power extremely quickly. She was turning hours worth of combat grade power output into minutes.

. . . Mobility isnt just a factor of carry capacity and speed, it's also of SIZE. Chisulo and that other one I forget the name of, . . .

I believe King Kong's great great great great great etc granddaughter is named Liz.

Kendrakirai wrote:

. . . they're often left behind because nobody remembers they CAN'T FIT THROUGH DOORS while armored. Captain Landon had to strip to fit into the Teraport cage. A human-sized being, if armored to the point you seem to want them to be, would be double their original size. Making them a bigger target, less mobile because the doors and corridors aren't big enough for proper troop movements, and the thing you seem to forget about Elf lugging that gold around is that she was draining her suit power extremely quickly. She was turning hours worth of combat grade power output into minutes.

Schlock-tech suits are very mobile . . . as long as the power holds out.

I suspect they become very immobile once the power is gone, though I don't remember any specific episodes of that.

. . . Mobility isnt just a factor of carry capacity and speed, it's also of SIZE. Chisulo and that other one I forget the name of, . . .

I believe King Kong's great great great great great etc granddaughter is named Liz.

Kendrakirai wrote:

. . . they're often left behind because nobody remembers they CAN'T FIT THROUGH DOORS while armored. Captain Landon had to strip to fit into the Teraport cage. A human-sized being, if armored to the point you seem to want them to be, would be double their original size. Making them a bigger target, less mobile because the doors and corridors aren't big enough for proper troop movements, and the thing you seem to forget about Elf lugging that gold around is that she was draining her suit power extremely quickly. She was turning hours worth of combat grade power output into minutes.

Schlock-tech suits are very mobile . . . as long as the power holds out.

I suspect they become very immobile once the power is gone, though I don't remember any specific episodes of that.

--FreeFlier

The only thing I remember off the top of my head is a mention of the increased gravity at the bottom of Osiri being a major concern for their suit power.

There's nothing wrong with having blast shields that try and get between you and incoming fire - as mentioned, that's great.

But the low-profile armour can be defeated by simple armour-piercing pistol rounds. That's from in-comic sources. One would assume that the hardsuits were pretty much proof against projectile weaponry. Shedding the vast majority of your armour to somewhat improve your defense against anti-armour weapons seems... counterproductive at best. And this of course assumes that your floating armour can even cover you in time.

We come back to the point "Why don't you just deploy the drones in addition to the hardsuit?" It's all the advantages, none of the disadvantages. I recall last time we had this argument somebody kept talking about hacking, but the fragsuit already consists of drones! It's EXACTLY the same hacking risk.

As for mobility, Elf was able to walk around carrying a couple tonnes of gold bar in a hardsuit. Schlockverse tech seems to make moving EASIER in armour, not harder.

Slightly more on topic: I say they try and build a Schlock-to-schlock link. Let bits of him stay stuck to all the armour. If anybody could handle the parallel processing involved in piloting all his distributed armour-bits, it's schlock.

Mobility isnt just a factor of carry capacity and speed, it's also of SIZE. Chisulo and that other one I forget the name of, they're often left behind because nobody remembers they CAN'T FIT THROUGH DOORS while armored. Captain Landon had to strip to fit into the Teraport cage. A human-sized being, if armored to the point you seem to want them to be, would be double their original size. Making them a bigger target, less mobile because the doors and corridors aren't big enough for proper troop movements, and the thing you seem to forget about Elf lugging that gold around is that she was draining her suit power extremely quickly. She was turning hours worth of combat grade power output into minutes.

Excuse me? I want them in hardsuits that are only slightly larger than human size. If they need more armour, I think that should be a parade of extra drones. The fragsuits are the things that seem absurdly large in "suit" mode and absurdly thin in "frag" mode.

As for power, the only times power has been noted as a problem was when an overpowering force turned it off, or a truly absurd amount of force was placed on them. Lugging the gold was NEVER mentioned as a problem - I double checked. She just didn't want to lean the things on any bulkheads.

I'll note as well that the fragsuit does absolutely bugger all on the power front, anyway.

Excuse me? I want them in hardsuits that are only slightly larger than human size. If they need more armour, I think that should be a parade of extra drones. The fragsuits are the things that seem absurdly large in "suit" mode and absurdly thin in "frag" mode.

You are talking like it has only two modes. Isn't the point that it can be configured to be anywhere in between those two extremes?

There's nothing wrong with having blast shields that try and get between you and incoming fire - as mentioned, that's great.

But the low-profile armour can be defeated by simple armour-piercing pistol rounds. That's from in-comic sources. One would assume that the hardsuits were pretty much proof against projectile weaponry. Shedding the vast majority of your armour to somewhat improve your defense against anti-armour weapons seems... counterproductive at best. And this of course assumes that your floating armour can even cover you in time.

We come back to the point "Why don't you just deploy the drones in addition to the hardsuit?" It's all the advantages, none of the disadvantages. I recall last time we had this argument somebody kept talking about hacking, but the fragsuit already consists of drones! It's EXACTLY the same hacking risk.

As for mobility, Elf was able to walk around carrying a couple tonnes of gold bar in a hardsuit. Schlockverse tech seems to make moving EASIER in armour, not harder.

Slightly more on topic: I say they try and build a Schlock-to-schlock link. Let bits of him stay stuck to all the armour. If anybody could handle the parallel processing involved in piloting all his distributed armour-bits, it's schlock.

Mobility isnt just a factor of carry capacity and speed, it's also of SIZE. Chisulo and that other one I forget the name of, they're often left behind because nobody remembers they CAN'T FIT THROUGH DOORS while armored. Captain Landon had to strip to fit into the Teraport cage. A human-sized being, if armored to the point you seem to want them to be, would be double their original size. Making them a bigger target, less mobile because the doors and corridors aren't big enough for proper troop movements, and the thing you seem to forget about Elf lugging that gold around is that she was draining her suit power extremely quickly. She was turning hours worth of combat grade power output into minutes.

Excuse me? I want them in hardsuits that are only slightly larger than human size. If they need more armour, I think that should be a parade of extra drones. The fragsuits are the things that seem absurdly large in "suit" mode and absurdly thin in "frag" mode.

As for power, the only times power has been noted as a problem was when an overpowering force turned it off, or a truly absurd amount of force was placed on them. Lugging the gold was NEVER mentioned as a problem - I double checked. She just didn't want to lean the things on any bulkheads.

I'll note as well that the fragsuit does absolutely bugger all on the power front, anyway.

Hm, okay, you're right, I wonder why I thought Elf complained about the power draw.

Anyway, separate drones are still not something most people would want. They'd get in the way of your heavies, especially since the heavies are the ones who are wearing them.

Even before, the pauldrones were normally part of the armor until they were turned loose. You need weapons systems that are compact and storable all together. That means the drones would normally be connected to the armor, making them bigger.

Not everything is a force multiplier. Size can be just as big a drawback as a benefit. As is complexity.

As additions to the armor the drones would either need their own Annie plants, or need to connect to the armor to charge. One increases their cost by quite a lot, one makes them shorter-lived and less useful at range (as well as keeping them from projecting their own shields, assuming they have them at all) as well as increasing their complexity as they have to interface with the armor. They'd have to be smaller to keep size down unless you want the suits to be huge and unwieldy, and the grunt inside the armor would have to use multiple controls, for the armor they're wearing AND the suits worth of drones, which divides their attention dangerously.

This way, the suit is its own power source for itself, the grunt isn't much bigger, he gains the benefit of spaced armor, mobile bulwarks and cover, and proactive riot shield, remote weapons he can order and he still has his normal armored uniform and weapons that he just has to point and pull the trigger on without having to go through whatever interface was in those clamshell arm guns like they had on Oisri.

And, as said, you can select anything in between, rather than being stuck with the extra bulk of the drones.

Why? This is one of the head-scratchers. There's no particular reason why the drones always have to be connected.

> Complexity

Drones are simpler than the fragsuit. They don't have to act as a suit!

> Power

The drones need power plants anyway - they fly, and that basically requires annies. See Vog's comment. micro-annies exist.

> The rest

None of that is an advantage to the fragsuit vs suit & drones.

They have to either connect to the suit to recharge power or for storage, since drones would be considered a part of the suit, like the Pauldrones and thus stored together, and the best place for that is connected to the suit. The drones are tied to the suit which is assigned to a grunt. You have to think military for this part. You're assigned a suit, the suit is assigned drones, you have to account for all of it during any inspection or audit and if you can't there's hell to pay. And they'd all be stored together because you need to suit up quick for combat or drills. Having to sort out who has what is just a huge ball of confusion waiting to happen.

It adds complexity because you need the drones to interface WITH the suit. Charging, storage, etc.

Microannies exist, yes, but even THEY need charging. They get refueled just like big plants do. Probably a lot more often because they ARE so small. We've never been told HOW Annie plants get refueled or how often though, so...

The drones would get in the way of the big suits because the grunt is already controlling a suit, he can't be assured to move as naturally in it the way he can just his uniform.

It's information overload, he has to keep track of his suit readouts AND the drones. Even if they're semiautomatic, that's still not ENTIRELY automatic. And no soldier in their right mind would WANT them to be fully automatic.

We can argue until the heat death of the universe, so until we get new information I'm out. My last word is simply that you're inventing complexity, and attributing problems to a drone-based system that already exist in the fragsuit concept.